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In 1864, Colonel John Chivington
surveyed his troops with pride as they galloped into a Colorado town.
The locals cheered these "brave" cavalry men who were returning
from their recent massacre of the "savages" at Sand Creek.
The mounted soldiers waved more than a few newly harvested scalps
of elderly Indian men. But more than a few of these soldiers had
very special trophies in the form of Indian female genitalia that
they had carved from their "enemies" and attached to their
hats.

In this Thanksgiving season,
we are asked to be grateful that European settlers extended the hand
of friendship to their Native brethren, and lived alongside them
in harmony and in the spirit of brotherhood. Thanks to the research
of brilliant scholar Ward
Churchill, we know that this "love" for
indigenous nations is evidenced by a series of massacres, including
an 1833 incident when men, women and children of the Sauk Nation
were slaughtered near the Mississippi River after having been driven
from their homes in Illinois. In 1854, 150 Lakotas were massacred
in Nebraska. In 1863, 500 Shoshones were killed in Idaho. In 1868,
300 Cheyenne were massacred in Oklahoma. Scores of other Cheyenne
were killed in Kansas, Nebraska and Wounded Knee, South Dakota in
1875, 1878 and 1890 respectively.

Between 1778 and 1871, the
U.S. government entered into approximately 400 treaties with indigenous
nations. The government violated the terms of every last treaty.
Countless numbers of children from indigenous nations were taken
from their homes and shipped off to boarding schools where every
ounce of their culture was forced out of them.

We Africans also know of
genocide. We too have been the targets of efforts to strip us of
our culture. Perhaps most importantly our land, Africa (like the
land of the indigenous nations of the Americas), has been stolen
by western capitalists. Our determination to regain control of every
square inch of Africa for the benefit of the African masses worldwide
is matched only by the determination of other indigenous nations
everywhere to do the same with respect to their respective homelands.

In our quest for control
of Africa, we Africans are driven by the knowledge that control of
land translates into power that can ultimately be manifested in the
form of diplomatic, military and economic advantage for all who are
part of the African Nation regardless of their country of residence.
On a more basic level, we understand that by any moral yardstick,
the injustice of settler colonialism can be corrected only by a return
of stolen land to indigenous populations. If we demand Africa for
the Africans, and Palestine for the Palestinians, we simply cannot
deny that same right to the indigenous nations of the Americas.

Thus, those among us who
harbor bourgeois dreams of integrating ourselves into the American
institutions and structures that maintain dominance of stolen territory
for the descendants of European invaders must come to understand
that we are instead morally obligated to stand shoulder to shoulder
with those who are indigenous to the western hemisphere, and to do
everything in our power to help them reclaim their land from the
U.S. empire. Progressive and revolutionary Africans are not exempt
from this admonition. Dozens of leftist organizations have a detailed
vision of a new socialist North American society. Unless these organizations
have consulted first with the indigenous nations and obtained their
consent, any plans for a new, revolutionary state on North American
soil are both presumptuous and arrogant.

When we consider that countless
enslaved Africans who escaped from plantations were given refuge
by indigenous nations, we have an even greater obligation to engage
in serious, ongoing discussions with Americaís first nations about
how we can help them take back their stolen continent.

Mark
P. Fancher is the author of "The Splintering of Global Africa:
Capitalismís War Against Pan-Africanism."